Dialog: Make Movie

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Dialog: Make Movie

Make Movie

Background:

Commercial video-recording software may not record each step of the model or a mechanism.

Also, MechDesigner may miss a step when you use the Cycle button to run the model.

You may see a small jump each time there is a missed step.

About Make Movie

Select the position and the size of the movie in the graphic-area.

Select the number of Frames

You can save the machine-cycle as a movie or as number of images. Each step in the movie is called a Frame. The Make Movie dialog-box records an exact number of frames or images, at equal increments of the Machine-Cycle.

Use Make Movie to record :

• a movie, with a number of Frames, as the GIF file-type.

- or -

•a number of images as PNG, JPG, or BMP file-types.

The file-name of each image is appended with a number.

How to open the Make-Movie dialog-box

MD-Icon-MakeMovie

1.Click File toolbar > Make Movie

- or -

1.Click File menu > Movie

The Make-Movie dialog-box is now open

Make-Movie dialog-box

MD-Dialog-MakeMovie

Top-Tip - Before you open the dialog, do ALT+H to move the Master Machine Angle to zero(0).
tog_minusFrame Size and Position 
MD-Dialog-MakeMovie-FrameSizePosition

You should see a rectangle in the Graphic-Area. This is the record Frame that you record.

Usually, you will want to edit the size and position of the recording Frame.

Specify the Frame Size and Position of the Frame

1.Use the Pre-set Frame Size...drop-down list-box to select a typical frame size.

OR

1.Edit Width and Height to the frame.

2.Edit the Left and Top of the frame.

tog_minusFile-name and File-type 
MD-Dialog-MakeMovie-FilenameFiletype

File-path and File-Type

1.Click the File-name and file-type... buttonRed-14-3 (at the bottom of this separator)

In the Windows® Save As dialog:

a.Browse to a File-path and enter a File-name (see Top-Tip, below)

b.Use the Save as type list-box to select a file-type -

Note: different file-types have different results - see File-Types below

c.Click the Save button

The File-path and File-name show in the boxes.Red-14-1Red-14-2

Top-Tip: Enter a file-name that ends with text and not a number.

FILE-TYPES

GIF file-type.

Makes a movie in GIF format.

GIF files can be very large when the frame-size is large.

PNG, JPG, JPEG, BMP file-types.

Saves one image file for each frame. See Number-of-Frames

MechDesigner appends 001, 002, 003, ... to the name of each image. E.g.: Hinge-A000.png, Hinge-A001.png, Hinge-A002.png, ... "HingeA"&"Number-of-Frames"

To compile PNG images as a movie, I use Avidemux 2.6 - a free tool you can download from the internet. My lawyer tells me I cannot recommend it.

In Avidemux 2.6:

1.Open the first image in the sequence of images - e.g. Hinge-A000.png

Open the first image only. Avidemux2.6 automatically imports the other images in the numbered sequence.

2.Save the movie with the MP4 movie format.

MP4, with the x264 codec, is the recommended format for YouTube®.

Save the Movie file with the same frame-size as the recorded images
tog_minusMake Movie... 
MD-Dialog-Movie-MakeMove

Number-of-Frames

1.Edit the Number-of-Frames box (Default = 30 Frames, Minimum=5 ; Maximum=10000)

2.Edit the Machine Start Angle (Default=0 ;  Minimum > 0, Maximum ≤ Machine End-Angle

3.Edit the Machine End Angle (Default=360 ; 720 ≥ Maximum > Minimum)

4.Select

oInclude Last Frame

oExclude Last Frame

Experiment! View the movie in your Video Player to see if there is a 'stutter' at the end of the movie.

Make Movie... button

4.Make Movie button

or Single Shot... button

When you click the Make Movie button, the model moves the model to the Start-Angle and makes the movie.

Please wait as the file(s) are saved to your PC.